A woman's quest to have her dead husband's baby will head interstate or overseas after the NSW Supreme Court found his sperm was her ''property'' but state laws prohibit her from using it to conceive a child. Jocelyn Edwards will be allowed to remove from storage at IVF Australia three ''straws'' of frozen sperm extracted from her husband Mark hours after he died in a workplace accident last year. But she will have to convince a fertility clinic in the ACT or Queensland to impregnate her because Mr Edwards did not sign a written consent before he died.

When Inger Rijn was last year refused a third dose of Panadeine at hospital in a last-ditch bid to manage chronic pain, her mind was made up. She would take her own life. Doctors at the Cabrini Hospital emergency department told the 70-year-old mother of three that she could not have another injection because ''we've given you enough to kill a horse''. Mrs Rijn felt no better. She joined Philip Nitschke's pro-euthanasia group Exit International and, with husband Victor Rijn, discussed with the group the legal implications of her husband being in the room when she died.

An Indonesian Christian's 15-year struggle to gain refugee status in Australia has come to an end. Now Dicky Susanto, his wife and seven-year-old son face imminent deportation. His supporters say the Immigration Department has handled the case badly because his brother was granted residency in identical circumstances. The psychiatrist is concerned about the mental health of the family and particularly their seven-year old son, who spent his entire life in Australia.

Religious education instructors in state schools are required to do less than one day's training before they teach hundreds of children. The volunteers, organised through the Access Ministries, pay just $15, attend a six-hour training session, and get a note from their minister in order to become accredited to teach Christian Religious Education classes. They have to complete an assignment and get a Working with Children's check, and they can teach as many hours a week as needed in state primary schools.

Australia is locked into settling 4000 extra refugees as part of its swap with Malaysia even if none of the 800 asylum-seekers flagged to be sent to Malaysia in return are deported. As the Gillard government came under renewed fire yesterday over the terms of its refugee swap with Kuala Lumpur, Immigration Department secretary Andrew Metcalfe admitted to a Senate committee that no asylum-seeker needed to be sent to Malaysia under the terms of the deal. "(But) Australia will still resettle all 4000 humanitarian refugees even if no asylum-seekers are sent," he told a Senate estimates committee hearing. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen continued to stonewall over whether Malaysia was reserving the right to veto asylum-seekers Canberra proposed to send to Kuala Lumpur.

The Anglican Church's disciplinary system will be challenged in the New South Wales Supreme Court today, by two Newcastle priests who are facing being stripped of holy orders. The church's professional standards board last year recommended the former dean of Newcastle Reverend Graeme Lawrence and Reverend Graeme Sturt be defrocked. The recommendation came after the board heard evidence of their alleged involvement in an incident involving a teenager at a clergy camp in the Riverina in the 1980s. The pair deny the allegations, which have not been pursued by the NSW Department of Public Prosecutions.

Federal politicians say they are overworked and want to cut the hours they spend at Parliament. But a Victorian mum juggling three jobs to make ends meet has hit out at MPs, who she says should stop "crying" about their workload. Liberal backbencher and GP Mal Washer said the public "lacks intelligence" if they didn't understand their representatives were more productive when well-rested.

Hundreds of Muslims, angered by the prospect of a government-closed church re-opening in their neighborhood, protested outside the church yesterday, causing the provisional military authority to back away from its promise to allow Orthodox clergy to reopen it. Protesters started gathering on Thursday afternoon outside the Church of the Virgin Mary and St. Abraam in Ain Shams, a poor section of northeastern Cairo. The church was scheduled to reopen that day, but protestors surrounded the building, preventing anyone from getting into it and trapping priests who were inside.